Sugarcane (saccharum officinarum) is a giant, thick, perennial grass cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world for its sweet sap. The plant grows in clumps of solid stalks and has sword-shaped leaves and many jointed stems. Mature canes can grow to 10 to 26 feet in height and 1 to 2 inches in diameter.
Although several cane-cutting machines have been used with some success, most of the sugarcane in the world is harvested by hand where labor costs are low. Cane is cut at or near the surface of the ground, stripped of its leaves by a knife, and trimmed at the top near the last mature joint. The cane is then piled in rows along the ground until picked up by hand or machine, and transported by cart or truck to a sugar factory, where a grinding mill extracts the sugar from the cane.
In industrialized countries, in many cases, cane is burned to get rid of leaves that hinder harvesting and processing. Upright cane is then harvested by machines that straddle a row, cutting and topping the stalks, stripping the leaves, and loading the crop into trailers. The longer, thicker, leaning cane that grows in some areas is piled in windrows by hand or by bulldozer and then loaded with huge, grab forks into trucks for transport to a sugar mill.